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Are you a name or a number?

From the department of catching up on my news feeds. There's an interesting rant written a little while ago on CNET.com bemoaning Nokia's use of code numbers for its smartphones. The thrust of the editorial is that numbers are meaningless and impersonal, and that Nokia should be injecting personality and flair into its devices by giving naming them in such a way to evoke our emotions.

The Lumia 920 - what does it mean to you?

Even worse, there's only a loose relationship among the different numbered devices. Unlike the Samsung Galaxy S II and Galaxy S3, which denotes a change in generation, the Lumias 710 and 900 came out after the 800; the 820 has more in common with the Lumia 920 than it does with the Lumia 800. Where's the logic in that?

However, "Lumia" is meant to usefully distinguish the phonemaker's Windows Phone line from its Asha family of Symbian smartphones, the same way that Samsung is now stamping "Ativ" on its Windows phones and "Galaxy" on its Android set.

And it could be worse. After all, Nokia could have easily called its first Lumia, the Lumia 800, the "Nokia L800" instead.

The alternative argument is to look at the string of names that HTC gave to its Android devices. For anyone with even the slightest degree of cynicism, names such as the Sensation and Vivid are more likely to evoke titters than aspirations.

Have Nokia perhaps struck the right balance by giving flair to a whole range under a unified name, rather than giving an oddly pretentious name to every single device?